Computer performance degradation due to their susceptibility to power supply disturbances

The author defines and discusses what is a power supply disturbance from various perspectives, indicating what effects power supply disturbances have on sensitive electronic equipment. He presents several case studies on computer performance, clearly revealing the correlation between the distinctive patterns of occurrence of power supply disturbance and computer interruptions at one computer site consisting of several small computer systems. He provides empirical evidence on the low frequency of computer system interruptions caused by power supply disturbances in relation to the other major computer system failure modes (e.g. software and hardware failures) at a large computer center. He demonstrates that the CBEMA (Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association) susceptibility curve provides a valuable model for assessing the performance of a given computer center when no detailed susceptibility characteristics of the system are known.<>